2000 Paddy Pallin 6 hour

2000 Paddy Pallin 6 hour, Orroral Valley, Namadgi National Park

Baptism of fire!
I ventured out for my first 6 hour rogaine with Adrian in Orroral Valley on Sunday April 30. I was a bit worried about it, as he’s a much better runner and I’m only just starting to get back into training. Thoughts of him wanting to charge around for most of the 6 hours and me being wasted after only a couple crossed my mind. But I was assured his other last minute recruit, John, wouldn’t be any fitter than me.

After planning our route and getting organised, we headed for the first control. Picked that up without much drama after about 25 minutes and then headed for the next one (number 82). After two hours of the event spent bashing around in thick scratchy scrub, we still hadn’t found a second control. Boy, weren’t we going well. We had seen a couple of other teams who seemed to be in a similar predicament though. By then though, we had managed to get a view across a valley to a hill from which we could work out what line we were on, and soon after we finally managed to find bloody 82 - that knoll on a spur.

Because I figured I’d have to work pretty hard to keep up with Adrian, I hadn’t wanted to overdress. So, not having any light weight pants, I wore shorts. I was also told a short sleeve t-shirt would be okay, even though I had a long one with me. Thankfully John lent me some gaiters, as despite them it hadn’t taken long for me to start becoming tired of being scratched.

We managed to pick up a couple more controls after 82, then climbed through some more pretty thick scrub and massive boulder fields up to the highest control. I was feeling that there wasn’t a millimetre of bare skin on my legs that hadn’t been scratched. I’d also seemed to be mostly just trying to stay in touch with Adrian and John who seemed to manage to bash through the scrub and up the hills a little quicker than the speed I seemed to find natural. After getting the summit control, we descended back to the valley floor which was cleared and ran/walked around picking up a number of others without having to go too far into the wooded areas.

I took my first look at my watch wondering how far away the finish was with an hour and a quarter to go and was reasonably happy with that. Although bashing around the densely wooded areas on the hills was reasonably tough going, I think I would have tired a lot quicker if we’d spent more time moving faster over easy terrain.
We crossed the Orroral River a few times (generally just ankle/shin deep) and the “Swamp of Despair” where, when crossing a creek running through it behind Adrian, I suddenly dropped to thigh deep.

I started to feel quite tired as we picked up our last few controls. We chose an easy twenty point control instead of a good bit tougher looking forty pointer to finish off with. I, and too a lesser extent I suspect John too, was very pleased with this decision. It allowed us to just walk a lot of the last ten or 15 minutes despite being on roads and still finish 10 minutes early.

We finished up with 830 points, so improved considerably after only having 60 points when a third of the time had elapsed. This gave us second spot overall - I think the two guys that came first got 950. Obviously there weren’t many strong teams. Adrian and John felt if we hadn’t got lost we probably could have beaten them. I’m not so sure, as this would have meant we’d need to have covered more ground and, not surprisingly, I was
really starting to tire by the end. It’s a bit of a silly argument anyway, as obviously not getting lost is a major factor in the sport.

Despite being tired and scratched and lost to the extent of not being able to find a control for some time, it was a great experience. They assure me most courses don’t have as much thick scrub as where we were for a lot of this one, so I expect I’ll do it again.

So there you have it - a report from someone at the novice end of a sport.

The only other thing to add is the bit that Adrian’s already mentioned where he left his keys in the car and, not realising that, we, his passengers, locked the car. Extensive efforts to get it open failed, the NRMA didn’t show, so with most people gone, we got lifts back with the few remaining and Adrian then had to drive back out with a spare set. The interesting bit about that, was that on his return he found a vehicle with some of the army guys who had done the cooking for everyone stuck in a ditch. They’d obviously been the last to leave and then got themselves stuck. After trying to get themselves out for three hours, Adrian and whoever had driven him back out there managed to help push them out.